August, an Ode
by shiny happy fits of rage
Summary: august gives each of them a different bruise. (for young justice appreciation month day one: season 3)


this is really sad and i'm sorry, i don't know why? also, reminder that there is way more content on my tumblr and my AO3!

Also! started a young justice gift exchange! its called the "Young Justice Xmas Fic Exchange" on AO3 - you can still sign-up so please do! it will be plenty fun! and i am also doing it as well so maybe i'll end up writing something especially for you!

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 _i._

"You know, sometimes things don't get better."

Artemis looks over her shoulder, turning away from the television (for the life of her, she can't remember what she's watching at all). Dick sits at her kitchen table, holding a coffee cup between his hands. His eyes are somewhere else entirely.

She nods. "Yes." There's nothing else to say.

 _ii._

Jaime misses the first part of what Bart says, engulfed in his own inner turmoil as he stares at his long fingers and wonders how bold it would be if he took his hand. He blinks at the sound, coming back to his body in an inspired spurt. "Come again, _ese_?"

"I think he hated me," says Bart lowly, not looking Jaime in the eye. He chews his lip and stares at the earth, plodding merrily along its ancient path.

He shakes his head. "He didn't hate you, Bart." It could, of course, be a complete lie, but what would Jaime know? All he'd seen of the guy was a flash of red hair, pictures on the wall of a graduation ceremony, a hologram of him in the memorial. An empty grave.

Bart smiles thinly. "Always can count on you to be the optimist." It's usually the other way around. He rolls back his shoulders and walks away. Jaime is left with the earth, and with a longing.

 _iii._

M'gann laughs and exhales and cries all at once, her fingers tracing a Polaroid she'd shoved into the photo album years ago. Frozen in time, Wally proudly wears a Burger King crown, smirking at the camera, a cheeseburger halfway to his mouth. Underneath the photo, she had written, _11/29/12, after seeing Twilight_. "I'd forgotten about these," she half-whispers.

Zatanna, clutching a pillow to her chest, smiles. "He was such a moron," she says with nothing but utter affection. She reaches over M'gann's shoulder to turn the page of the album. The 2012 Christmas party. Wally features heavily. On the very top of the page, Wally has his arm thrown around Kaldur jovially, a smear of eggnog just visible on his lip. Below that, he stands underneath the mistletoe, on his tiptoes as he does his best to plant a kiss on Conner's cheek.

"God, I miss this," says Zatanna. It's the understatement of the century. _Miss_ is such a short word, just four words, and surely its back must be bowed under the tremendous weight it carries. M'gann nods. She wipes quickly at the tear on her cheek before it can roll onto the glossy pages.

 _iv._

Cassie clutches and pulls at Tim, and her head is swirling and she has to physically silence herself, burying her lips into his shoulder as he kisses her neck. There had been a gun pointed at his head, and she'd watched in horror as he just barely ducked. She's sure his hair is shorter.

"You scared me," she keeps finding herself saying, but she isn't sure if it's true. What really scares her is the sound of the zeta beam tube opening into the watchtower, and the way Nightwing's announcement ricochets off the gleaming walls and the way Artemis looks just to the left of everyone who talks, her hands curled around nothing at all, and the way they could all see jagged pieces of _something_ that she leaves on the floor.

You scared me.

 _v._

"I think you love me," says Wally, a ghost halfway out her window. It's August but his words are full-blown January, and she can still see the outline of the stupid 2016 glasses he'd bought at Party City, still feel his elbow brushing against her ear, still smell the champagne in his breath. "I think you are uncommonly, unequivocally, eternally in love with me and that although you deny it, every day you come closer and closer to caving and admitting the truth, that you think I am _hot stuff_."

It was a useless claim, because when he said those words they were under the sheets in the bed they shared in the house they shared, and they'd already celebrated the new year in the same way they'd celebrated the past four new years, and she'd already told him she loved him a thousand times. Nevertheless, Artemis had grinned as he pressed his lips to hers and said a clumsily composed half-prayer in her mind because nothing in the world could ever be better.

In the present, the breeze makes her shoulders tremble. "Yeah," she says, to no one in particular. She wraps her blanket around herself tighter and closes her eyes. August continues.


End file.
